Leaving the Yellow House | Literary Criticism & Book Review

Leaving the Yellow House Critical Overview

"Leaving the Yellow House" was first published in Esquire magazine in 1957. Eleven years later, along with five other stories, it was collected in Mosby's Memoirs and Other Stories. This collection re- flected work written over a period of seventeen years; the first story was published only a few years after Bellow emerged onto America's literary scene with the publication of his earliest novels. Mosby's Memoirs included three stories that had been previously published with the novella Seize the Day.

"Leaving the Yellow House" was one of the stories that was not brought to the public attention since its original publication. Since the 1960s, however, it has become one of Bellow's most anthologized pieces of fiction, however, it is uncharacteristic of his work. Unlike most of Bellow's work, "Leaving the Yellow House" focuses on uneducated rural characters in a southwestern setting rather than the more typical urban intellectuals.